Hart Crane and the Homosexual Text: New Thresholds, New Anatomies

by Thomas E. Yingling

"Canonized for being insufficiently American although he took America as his subject, chastised for obscurity by readers who would not allow or would not read homosexual meanings, Crane embodies many understandings of America, and of the predicament of the gay writer."— Voice Literary Supplement

"A brilliant critical model for understanding how textuality and sexuality can produce pervasive effects on each other in the writing of a figure like Crane."—Michael Moon, Duke University

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[mega them · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yingling is one of my favorite theorists/critics, and his analysis of Crane in the context of LGBT lit theory is beautiful. So much about how society restricts our bodily autonomy/body language. Specifically: anacoluthon, chiasmus and catachresis.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star is probably unfair as this is clearly an academic text and I was reading it for pleasure, but there is something to be said for converting a doctoral thesis into a readable book. As it is, it just served as a reminder to me of all the reasons I did not pursue a higher degree in literature once I finished my B.A. However, if you're in academia and you're not yet post-deconstructionism, this book offers some compelling reasons for why you should be. (Point of interest, does *anybody* still teach deconstructionism? Is it disavowed like the Chinese do with their dissidents or is it just one way of analyzing a text?